Picture someone with four browser tabs open. One is your homepage, the other three are your competitors. They're comparing, they're in a hurry, and none of you gets more than a few seconds before the next tab wins.
That's the job your homepage has. It doesn't need to say everything. It needs to say the right three things quickly: what you do, why you're believable, and what to do next.
These homepage design tips are about that one page: what goes on it, in what order, and what to leave off. (If you want the principles that apply across your whole site, our guide to website design best practices covers those, and we won't repeat them here.)
Homepage design tips for the first screen
The first screen is everything a visitor sees before they scroll. Designers call it above the fold, a leftover from newspapers, and it still matters because it decides whether anyone scrolls at all.
Four things belong there.
A headline that names what you do
Read your headline as a stranger. Does it say what you sell, for whom and roughly where? "Custom kitchens for Reno homeowners" does the job. "Crafting tomorrow's spaces today" doesn't, because nobody searches for that and nobody can picture it.
Clever is fine once you're clear. Clear first, clever second, and cut the clever if it costs you any clarity. A good test is your value proposition in one sentence: who you help, with what, and why you're a better pick.
One main action
Pick the one thing you want most visitors to do and make it the most obvious button on the page. For a restaurant that may be "Reserve a Table." For a contractor, "Request a Quote." For a software company, "Book a Demo."
You can have a quieter second option, like a phone number or a link to your work. What you can't have is five buttons of equal weight. When everything is a priority, visitors pick nothing. Plain, specific wording beats "Learn More" or "Submit" every time, because it tells people what happens when they click.
A real image
Show your actual work, your actual team or your actual building. A real photo of the person who'll answer the phone does more than a polished handshake from a stock library, and visitors can tell the difference faster than you'd think.
Enough navigation to find their way
Keep the menu short, with plain labels like Services, Work, About and Contact. Save the clever naming for your marketing copy. If you have more than seven or so top-level items, some of them probably belong inside others.
Put the sections in the order people ask questions
A homepage isn't a brochure laid flat. It's a conversation, and visitors ask their questions in a predictable order. Build the page to answer them in that order:
- What is this, and is it for me? The first screen.
- What exactly do you do? A short overview of your main services, each linking to its own page.
- Can I trust you? Reviews, past work, recognizable names, awards you actually earned.
- How does it work? Three or four plain steps take the fear out of the unknown.
- What do I do next? A clear closing action, and a note on how pricing works if that's a common worry.
You don't need all five on every homepage, but the order holds. A common mistake is opening with your history ("Founded in a garage in...") before the visitor knows whether you do what they need. Your story is good. It belongs on the About page, with a link, not above the fold.
Trust belongs high on the page
Trust is the gap between a visit and an inquiry. The best homepage proof is specific, which means a named customer saying a real thing beats a row of generic five-star icons.
"We've had an increase of people asking about our site, our business has increased substantially. The communication is phenomenal and the budget is right on target!" Don Lamers, Western Nevada
That works because it names a person, a company and a result. If you have something like it, put it near the top, not in the footer. The same goes for awards, review ratings and client logos, as long as they're real. We'd rather you show two true things than ten padded ones.
If you're a local business, your Google Business Profile rating is some of the most believable proof you own, because strangers wrote it. Show the rating or link to it. And check the basics: a visible phone number, an address if customers visit you, and a form that works. Test them yourself. A broken form on a homepage is a very expensive typo.
Write for scanners
People rarely read a homepage word for word. Nielsen Norman Group has documented for decades that most visitors scan web pages instead of reading them, so write accordingly:
- Short paragraphs, two or three lines at most.
- Headings that carry meaning on their own ("Websites built to bring in leads", not "Our Approach").
- Lists where you have three or more parallel things.
- Plain words. If a sentence would sound strange said aloud to a customer, rewrite it.
Then cut. Whatever you've written, you can probably say it in two thirds as many words. If a line doesn't help someone understand, trust or contact you, it's decoration.
Design the phone version on purpose
Most visitors will see your homepage on a phone before a laptop, and Google uses the mobile version of your site for indexing. Design the phone layout deliberately instead of letting it fall out of the desktop version:
- The headline and main button should both be visible without scrolling.
- Buttons need to be big enough for a thumb, with room around them.
- Tap-to-call should work with one tap.
- Nothing should jump around while the page loads. Layout shifts make people tap the wrong thing, and Google measures them as part of its Core Web Vitals.
Open your own homepage on your phone, outdoors, on cellular data. If it's slow or awkward there, that's what most people experience. Try an older, cheaper phone too if you can borrow one. Your newest handset hides a lot of sins that your customers will meet.
What to leave off
Some things look impressive in a design review and quietly cost you leads:
- Auto-rotating sliders. Most visitors never see slide two, and sliders slow the page down.
- Autoplay video with sound. Visitors leave rather than hunt for the mute button.
- Pop-ups the moment the page loads. Let people look first.
- A wall of services with no hierarchy. Show the three that make you money and link out to the rest.
- Vague claims. "Quality service" and "customer-first" describe every business, so they tell the visitor nothing.
- Outdated details. An old offer, a dead link or a holiday banner in March says nobody's paying attention.
Watch what visitors actually do
Opinions about a homepage are cheap, and everyone you ask will have one. Behavior is better evidence. A heatmap shows where people click and how far they scroll. Conversion tracking shows how many visitors reach your contact page and finish the form.
If nobody scrolls past the first screen, the first screen isn't earning the scroll. If people click something that isn't a link, they expected it to be one. Change one thing at a time, give it a few weeks of real traffic, and keep what works.
Check your homepage this week
Run this quick check in a fresh browser tab:
- Can a stranger say what you do within five seconds?
- Is the main action obvious and specific?
- Is there believable proof before the halfway point?
- Does it work smoothly on a phone?
- Is everything on it still true?
Fix the first failure first. If you're not sure how your homepage reads to outsiders, ask someone who has never seen it to describe your business after five seconds. Their answer is better data than any opinion in your office.
A homepage isn't a trophy. It's a front door, and the goal is simple: help the right person see they're in the right place. If the page is working but the rest of the site isn't, our piece on a website not generating leads is the next place to look. And if you'd like a second opinion on yours, book a discovery call and we'll walk through it with you.